A prototype design for a bamboo-and-nipa emergency shelter made by University of San Carlos architecture students and faculty.
With a tight budget of P70,000 per house, the Capitol’s task force on rehabilitation said it’s possible to build a “disaster-resilient” house for a family of five.
Task Force Paglig-on chief Baltazar Tribunalo said they will push for a design that uses earth blocks made of anapog (limes tone) and cement to build one- story units for families displaced by supertyphoon Yolanda in north Cebu.
“This will really be practical. At the same time, the materials will come from the community because anapog is abundant in northern Cebu,” he told Cebu Daily News.
No national funds have been secured yet for the P6.6 billion funding requirement for shelters needed in Cebu over the next three years.
However, the Cebu provincial task force is ready with its choice of design.
Consultations
This was model for “durable” housing was one of several submitted by a team of Architecture majors and professors from the University of San Carlos College of Architecture and Fine Arts (Cafa).
The university also came up with prototype designs for a bamboo-and- nipa emergency shelter and transition dwellings that use fiberboard and plyboard.
Tribunalo said the P70,000 design was chosen after a series of consultations with the task force’s shelter cluster.
The main material is earth blocks with galvanized iron (GI) sheets for the roof.
Earth blocks were previously used in low-cost housing projects for the Badjao community and for informal settlers in Mandaue City with the local government.
More realistic
For Yolanda survivors, the first version of the Cebu rehabilitation plan in January estimated P250,000 per housing unit but this had to be scaled down on orders of Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III “to make the plan more realistic.”
The design submitted by university volunteers uses Interlocking Compressed Earth Blocks (ICEB).
This will allow the province or its private sector partners to build more houses for Yolanda victims without sacrificing the quality of the structure, said Tribunalo.
A model house will first be built and presented to beneficiaries in north Cebu for their feedback and observations, he said.
A consultation will follow where the task force will gather reactions to make sure that “the beneficiaries like the design and structure of the house.”
Model showcase
If the design gets the approval of the community, Tribunalo said beneficiaries will be trained to produce the earth blocks.
They will be given compensation for the work, and the houses will be awarded to them as well, he said.
“Sila na ang naghimo, bayran pa sila while making it, and after all of that, they will own the house,” said Tribunalo.
The project will be monitored by a technical committee composed of local officials, community members and the task force.
Design and cost are crucial for post-Yolanda rehabilitation, he said, since the Cebu provincial government aims to build around 50,000 houses in 15 towns and one city that were badly affected by the supertyphoon.
Investment
The rehabilitation budget which Cebu province will submit to the national government amounts to P10.4 billion, to be implemented over three years from 2014 to 2017.
Over half of it or P6.6 billion is for shelter and resettlement alone (including lot acquisition and development.)
“Our basis before was NHA’s (National Housing Authority) two-story design which was much bigger but when we checked the budget, it turned out that fewer people can benefit from the design due to financial constraints. Now it’s more on redesigning and the availability of the budget,” Tribunalo said.
The earth blocks offer a practical alternative.
After mixing limestone with concrete, the material is molded into blocks using an ICEB machine.
In their proposal, the university team said the blocks have “high compressive strength that could be used as a load bearing wall or shear wall for a two- or three-story building.”
“It’s very advantageous because limestone is present in the towns. It’s environment-friendly at the same time; gravel is very expensive,” said Tribunalo in an interview.
“The team from Cafa promised to send the final design within the week,” he added.